Slavoj Žižek
Slovenian · 1949–
Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic who blends Lacanian psychoanalysis, Hegelian philosophy, and Marxism to analyze ideology and popular culture.
Wikipedia ↗“The function of ideology is not to offer us a point of escape from our reality but to offer us the social reality itself as an escape from some traumatic, real kernel.”
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“What we experience as "reality" is always already symbolized, constituted, structured by symbolic mechanisms — and the Real is the rock upon which every such symbolization stumbles.”
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“The national Cause is ultimately the way subjects of a given nation organize their collective enjoyment through national myths.”
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“Liberal multiculturalism masks an actual universality — the universality of capitalism — with the false appearance of respecting differences.”
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“There is something inherently mystifying in a direct confrontation with subjective violence: the overpowering horror of violent acts and empathy with the victims inexorably function as a lure which prevents us from thinking.”
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“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
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Originally from Fredric Jameson, The Seeds of Time (1994); Žižek popularized the formulation.